


Dice of Brass and Bone

by Istezada



Category: Original Work
Genre: "swallowed by the mist" is not a euphemism for anything, Gen, Magic, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 22:44:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11323248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Istezada/pseuds/Istezada
Summary: Dedicated most humbly to Matthew Mercer and the cast of Critical Role, for getting the writing side of my brain to actually produce something for the first time in years.





	Dice of Brass and Bone

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated most humbly to Matthew Mercer and the cast of Critical Role, for getting the writing side of my brain to actually produce something for the first time in years.

“Look at you. Such bloodlust. I always knew darkness would be a good shade on you.” The voice was as soft as the touch of mist on bare skin and just as dangerous.

Mirit didn’t turn from his study of the night’s shadows beyond the tent flap. “You knew I was an empty mold that you could fill as pleased you.”

“That is, I think, what I said.” Shasa’s familiar bulk joined him in the entrance of the command tent and this time Mirit snorted and glanced up at his mentor. When he first laid eyes on the man, he’d seen a resemblance to an animated boulder dressed in elegant clothes. He’d never told Shasa, mostly due to an instinct for survival that kept his life as boring as possible. Not that a Thrower’s life could ever, exactly, be boring.

Snorting again, more quietly this time, Mirit looked back to the shadows and the mist that curled outside the oiled and painted silk walls.

“Tonight,” he said.

“Yes.”

“It will be… good.” It was a mind-boggling idea, that it might all be over by dawn.

This time it was Shasa’s turn to laugh, a long, helpless sound of mirth and delight very different from his usual sharp snaps of amusement. “Desiccation, boy. Good has nothing to do with us. It will not be good.”

Mirit ground away the irritation of being called “boy” as automatically as he rubbed the tattoo that curled around his right eye and flicked the bone die that dangled from a cord around his neck. Shasa found both affectations to be unnecessary and possibly offensive reminders of Mirit’s past, which only added to Mirit’s determination to keep them, even if he was now comfortable in the tailored and embroidered clothing that Shasa found so normal.

He glanced sideways and quirked a smile at Shasa as the older man rolled his eyes. “Fine. It will not be good. It will be done.”

Shasa’s grin sharpened. “Yes.”

Tonight, finally, the culmination of a decade of study and training and work would arrive. Tonight, finally, the castle would fall and with it every man, woman, and child of the empire that had given them both birth. Or they would both be dead.

“Are you satisfied, then, with your work?”

“My sculpting?” A heavy hand fell on his shoulder and squeezed gently. Somehow, Mirit couldn’t get used to signs of affection from Shasa, no matter how common they had become. Mountains could be expected to explode, not comfort. “Mirit, in eighty years, I’ve never seen a Thrower like you.”

“That does not mean you’re satisfied.”

Shasa grunted and pulled his hand away to fish in a pouch at his belt. “Here,” he said a moment later and offered a palmful of polished brass dice.

 

***

 

Blunt fingers attached to a scarred hand reached suddenly and pulled two of the bone dice from the scattered pieces before scooping up the remaining dice and tossing them again. Mirit froze, his own hand paused in performing the exact same action.

What?

He blinked at the one and the five that had been set aside and the trio of dice that now showed two sixes and a three.

No good dice there. No one to left to play dice with anyway. Three days ago, Kulip or Ghonika would have been the ones stealing his dice. Now they were gone.

The dice sat there, carved bone in a chipped plate. Both plate and dice were stained with countless days of march. Mud, blood, food, and oil were ground into and dried across the surfaces. Even if he had access to the fine soaps the officers used, Mirit doubted the dice would ever lose the splotched stains and the plate… well, it would probably be less work to carve a new one than to get this one clean.

His hand moved again, gathering the dice and rattling them in his curled fingers.

A twitch of his wrist dropped the dice back onto his plate. He plucked out one five, leaving the other with the remaining dice. A five could become a one in the next roll.

Survive. Just survive.

“Soldier?”

He almost dropped the handful of dice, blinking up at the well-dressed man who crouched in front of him. Who…

Shadowed gray eyes, set in a bare, smooth rock of a head, met his gaze as he felt his mouth drop open like a mist-touched. Improbably delicate silver lace frothed at the man’s shirt collar and was coming untucked from his cuffs under fine, dark brown leathers embroidered with deep red and silver thread. Brown, silver, and heart’s blood red were the colors of no house that Mirit knew, but no one but a nobleman could afford clothes like that, either the quality or the state of cleanliness. The only normal thing about the boulder-like man was the mud splashed nearly to his knees across sturdy boots.

“Wh…” The word got stuck in his throat and shattered into pieces as he coughed. Had he even spoken since the attack? Since… How much time had passed since the mist finally faded?

“What’s your name, soldier?” the lord asked.

Again.

He’d already said that.

“Tawn Mirit, lord.”

Maybe he was mist-touched. He was sitting in the dirt, staring up at a lord. No bow. No salute. Just sitting there, clutching four dice like they were diamonds.

The lord nodded. “Have you cleaned your weapons, Mirit?” Gentle. Soft. Like a hostler talking to a spooked horse. It was unsettling.

Mirit glared. He couldn’t help it. He might not be sane anymore. No one was sane anymore. But his daggers were clean, sharp, and oiled. The new splinters in his spear haft were smoothed out and coated with canner glue. Now that the question has been asked, though, he was suddenly aware of dried blood and the filth of Darig’s guts stiffening his uniform. Blood stained his skin and flaked away as he scratched his jaw with his free hand.

After a moment of silence, the well-dressed man chuckled. “Well, now I know how we finally beat them off. That scowl is bright enough to burn the mist off a swamp, Mirit. Come.” He pushed to his feet and waited.

If he wasn’t a soldier, the note of command in that last word might have been meaningless. He might have ignored it and gone back to throwing bone dice at his battered plate, if only to distract himself from the look on Darig’s face when he died.

If he wasn’t a soldier, he’d be dead.

He was a soldier. And the order cut through the haze that fogged his brain. So he scooped up the dice and plate and dumped both into his pack before settling the pack’s straps on raw shoulders. Extracting his spear from the stacked arms took only a few seconds longer. The lord turned sharply and headed toward the nearest edge of camp and Mirit followed.

 

***

 

A twitch of his wrist sent the brass dice tumbling against the battle maps that covered a scarred wooden tabletop. Beyond the boundaries of the tent, men screamed and stone walls crumbled. Mists swept in and clung, seeping over unblocked thresholds, curling down chimneys. Within the silk walls, a single hooded lantern provided just enough light for him to watch the dice fall, bounce, and come to rest. There was mud. Of course, there was mud. But no mist. Not inside.

He felt his lips quirk up in absent-minded triumph when the dice revealed three sixes in a group. That would be a nice score, if he was playing against anything other than the night air. Somewhere, he knew, the Flickers would be tossing their royal coins within protective sigils. High in the towers, where they could see the field and, maybe, stay out of his reach, they would combat his rolls and try to kill him before he killed them.

Rolling the remaining dice again, his triumph melted away with a two and a four and he sighed. Pausing to pull the lead stick from behind his ear, he drew several careful lines onto one of the maps before, again, gathering his dice and throwing them once more. Beside him, working over another table of maps, Shasa cursed and snatched up his own dice.

When dawn came, he was still throwing. The maps were almost unrecognizable, covered in notes and amendments. Four of his dice had tarnished and gone off true and there had been several eternities of panic while he dug through his belongings to find the discolored bone dice that he’d been carrying since long before Shasa chose him. The combination of brass and bone took several throws to master, but he was still alive and the mist thinned and fled from his tent again.

At noon, when a nervous hand pushed open the tent flap and a scrawny woman in ragged clothes poked her head inside, he was still throwing and still alive.

It took several minutes for him to realize that she existed and look at her.

She flinched away and almost fell to her knees. “M-master Thrower?” she stammered.

He blinked at her and tried not to laugh. No one had ever called him that before. Shasa would probably kill her for the impudence.

“What?” His voice was rough and unpredictable as the turns of the dice he’d been watching for hours.

“Master, they’re… the… sir.” She took a step toward him, thought better of it, and retreated again. The hand not clutching the tent flap gestured outside. “You’re...”

Mirit pulled in a breath and let it sigh slowly out, even as he looked away to let his dice drop to the table again. “Breathe, woman,” he said. “Three times.”

She obeyed. It didn’t stop her trembling, but her voice was steadier when she spoke. “The castle is gone, sir. The walls. Ev… everything.”

He stared silently at the dice. Stared at two threes, two sixes, and a four. Nothing. A completely worthless roll.

“Gone?” he repeated.

“Yes, sir.”

Silently, he nodded and scooped up his dice. Shasa had disappeared over the course of the night, swallowed by the mist and darkness. His table bore blackened holes where his dice had melted, burning through maps and table to fall into the hissing mud, so Mirit tucked the remaining dice, brass and bone, into his own pouch and straightened aching shoulders as he turned. The woman retreated further, backing out of his tent, and he followed her to see the mist-slick remains of a tumbled empire.


End file.
